Christian Web Trends Bloghttp://blog.ourchurch.com
A look at how trends in communication technology impact individuals and organizations.Fri, 09 Dec 2016 13:34:56 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.15 Easy Marketing Tricks You Can Use Without Losing Your Soulhttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/09/5-easy-marketing-tricks-without-losing-soul/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/09/5-easy-marketing-tricks-without-losing-soul/#commentsFri, 09 Dec 2016 13:32:43 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51503The marketing process is pretty linear – you run your campaign, people see it, people like your product, and they buy it. However, things are not always as simple as they seem to be. Sometimes, you just can’t detect what’s ruining your perfectly designed advertising campaign. If this is your problem, it’s time to try something new. Fresh approaches to old problems can help you if you’ve got your back against the wall. Let’s take a look at some marketing tricks that professionals recommend.

1) Focus on helping people

When it comes to marketing, there are always two sides – one is you, the seller, and the other is your buyer. But, in order to break this seller-buyer relation, you need to change your point of view. If you focus on actually helping people, your business can bloom.

Your customers will find you reliable and honest, which is one of the most important things when it comes to business.

2) Listening

Since you don’t make your products for yourself, listening to your customers is essential. There are many ways for you to get their opinion. Investing in digital marketing might give your business the well-needed boost. This is also a great way to hear what your customers have to say. So, organize a comment section for your website and establish social media profiles for your business. People will share, comment, and you will get a clear picture of their demands and wishes.

3) Connect with others

The internet is a sea of content and it can be difficult to swim to the surface. Keep in mind that you can’t do it by yourself, no one can. That’s why connecting with other websites can be very productive for your business. Connect with prominent bloggers and notable social media pages. A single link from these people can give you hundreds of new visitors and potential customers. Link out to some important blogs or websites from your website. This way you suggest their service to your visitors, so you can expect them to return the favor.

4) Be careful with low prices

Many entrepreneurs lower their prices in order to attract the customers. Although this can be a good idea in some cases, it’s usually a road that leads to a blind alley. The fact is, if your price is too low, people will consider your product is not very good.

On the other hand, people will expect excellence if your prices are high. The best solution is to maintain reasonable prices. This way, you will be able to cover different groups and give each person what he or she needs. It takes time to establish this sale philosophy so be patient and make smart moves.

5) Offer something for free

Besides providing excellent content on your website and social media pages, it’s a great strategic move to give your customers something for free. We’re talking quality items that you could certainly sell but you choose to give them away instead. People always appreciate free things so this strategy can bring you plenty of new visitors and customers.

The message here is what’s important. Many websites offer a free membership or a PDF book regarding their business. If you do this, there is a good chance people will get more interested in what you have to offer.

The bottom line

Leading a great marketing campaign is essential if you want to be on the top. However, every successful entrepreneur knows that you need to save your soul and be honest with your customers. This is the only way to maintain a stable relationship with them. Each one of the tips given in this article will help your goal but you need to have a good strategy and to use them in the right moment. If you are short on cash but still decide to give something for free – the results might not be so good. Create a meaningful plan and execute it carefully. Good luck!

Which of these marketing tactics resonates with you? Why?

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/09/5-easy-marketing-tricks-without-losing-soul/feed/2These Reveal Your Online Reputation, Whether You Like It or Nothttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/08/these-reveal-online-reputation/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/08/these-reveal-online-reputation/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2016 15:16:59 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51569You are not who you say you are.

Here me out… I’m not saying you’re lying or being disingenuous. But, a church, school, ministry or business can put whatever it wants on its website, mission statement, promotional materials, etc.

People will read it, but they won’t take your word for it. They will look for corroborating evidence.

Your reputation is not what you say you are. It’s not even what other people tell you they think of you. It’s what they say about you when you’re not around.

Checking online reviews is a fundamental part of the shopping process – whether a person is shopping for Christmas gifts, investigating private schools, or looking for a new church.

Research from BrightLocal reveals “91 percent of consumers rely on reviews regularly or at least occasionally to inform their purchase decisions.”

But most organizations – especially nonprofits ministries, schools and churches – are completely complacent when it comes to online reviews. That is until they get a bad review. Then they totally freak out.

I’ve had several people from businesses and nonprofits contact me in a panic, “Someone posted a negative review about us online! How do we get it removed?!?”

Sorry, but you can’t remove negative reviews from sites like Google and Yelp.

The best way to handle negative online reviews?

You can try to reach out to the person who posted the negative review, try to make things right and hope they will change their review, however…

The best way to handle negative online reviews is to be proactive about getting positive reviews.

Nobody’s perfect. Everyone knows that. When people check online reviews, they’re not expecting all 5-star ratings. But people will form a very different opinion about your organization if you have 1 negative review and 0 positive reviews verses if you have 1 negative review and 20 positive reviews.

Furthermore, more online reviews will improve where your organization ranks in local search engines.

The good news is BrightLocal’s research also reveals 70% of consumers will leave a review for a business when asked.

So, get to work and start asking your business customers, your school’s parents, your ministry supporters, or your church members to post online reviews, especially on Google and Yelp. Email them. Bring it up in your next meeting.

A one-time purchase of our hardware kit eliminates the per-contact or per-transaction fees charged for cloud-based messaging. And because our system can scale to accommodate growth, it will serve you for years to come.

Now through December 31st, churches can enjoy special holiday pricing on our automated phone, text and email hardware kits – the best long term messaging solution on the market.

Since 1989 when a church emergency prompted PhoneTree founder A.J. DiBianca to create the first automated messaging system, PhoneTree has been the leader in automated calling and messaging. Drawing from more than 25 years of experience, we implement messaging best practices in our products, and provide the best customer support in the automated messaging industry.

This is a sponsored post. Learn how your organization can sponsor a post or giveaway and get your product or service in front of our 20,000 email subscribers, 10,000 Twitter followers, and 2,000 Facebook fans.

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/06/some-holiday-cheer-from-phonetree/feed/03 Musts Every Church Website Needs for Christmashttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/05/3-musts-every-church-website-needs-for-christmas/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/05/3-musts-every-church-website-needs-for-christmas/#respondMon, 05 Dec 2016 20:51:03 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51557As I write this with “There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays” playing in the background, I am reminded that Christmas is less than 3 weeks away.

Just like my family, millions of other families are making plans for how they are going to spend their Christmas. A big part of their Christmas plans include where they will attend church. In fact, according to a Pew research report, Christmas is second only to Easter as the time of the year when more Americans search the internet using the word “Church”. This means that there is a huge opportunity to have new visitors walk in your doors this Christmas season.

However, the only way that you will get the opportunity to meet these visitors is if you have the following 3 pieces of information prominently displayed on your website:

Service Times: Most visitors are looking for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day service times. Make sure they are easy to find on your homepage.

Address: Because many people searching for churches in your area don’t regularly attend your church, don’t make visitors hunt for your address. It may be listed in your footer, but during this time of the year, put it higher up on your homepage as well.

What To Expect: I have learned… Frustration occurs when expectations aren’t met. Eliminate frustration by setting proper expectations.

Different churches have different styles of Christmas services. Some are casual, where some are more formal. Some provide childcare, while others expect children to attend the service. Put that information either on your homepage or include a link to a “What To Expect at our Christmas Eve Services” link that takes visitors to a page with all of this information.

Having these 3 “musts” on your homepage will not only increase the number of people that will attend your services but that they will feel more comfortable when they arrive.

What other bits of information are important to have on your church website during the Christmas season? Please post your comments below!

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/05/3-musts-every-church-website-needs-for-christmas/feed/0Dealing with Toxic Social Mediahttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/01/dealing-with-toxic-social-media/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/01/dealing-with-toxic-social-media/#commentsThu, 01 Dec 2016 18:14:01 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51526This is a guest post by Lisa DeSherlia. Read more about how you can guest post on Christian Web Trends here.

Make America great again! Happy days are here again! Not my President! No hate in my country! She won the popular vote! Get rid of the Electoral College! Never Trumpers are traitors and sniveling crybabies! You guys lost! Get over it, you whiners! What kind of country do we live in? I’m done with you! You voted against all we stand for! Good riddance, Killary!

Dealing with Toxic Social MediaBehold the Current Hatefest

The hatefest raged during the bitter primaries. Here’s one example. Throughout the primaries to today, users have flooded the page of a Governor who had opposed the President-Elect out of principle. They have trolled him with vile epithets. Mud-slinging kept up through the general election. Both sides of a vehemently divided nation continue the toxicity. I’ve never seen anything like it! My Facebook friends have been flooding my Timeline with hateful, rage-filled, inflammatory posts. Generally, I’ve ignored them. Yet as they intensified after the shocking election results, social media has become oppressive and depressing.

Dealing with Toxic Social MediaWinners and Losers

The election results left me reeling. I’m sure all of you have strong feelings about the election results one way or another. Are you a Donald Trump supporter? I’m safe assuming that you feel happily surprised, thrilled, and optimistic about your man’s victory. You see your country being taken back! What about the whiners and sore losers? Get over it! You lost! Are you a pro-life “NeverTrump” voter or a Hillary supporter? I know that you don’t feel good. You probably feel stunned, heartbroken, scared, even devastated. What kind of country do you live in? A nation where half the people voted hate, fraud, sexual assault, and immorality? Now you are being trashed as whiners and crybabies?

Dealing With Toxic Social MediaSocial Media Users, Unite

This election has been the most divisive one in history. Social media has intensified it. Users can hide behind a computer screen and sound off about anything. Election season makes it worse. Right after the election, I found myself un-friending a person who posted a hurtful comment under my post. Also, I blocked the posts of some Facebook friends from showing up in my Timeline. I simply ignore the rest. Meanwhile, the hatefest rages on. On both sides. Out of my experience, I believe that we can restore civility to our discussion and restore grace to politics.

Dealing with Toxic Social MediaHelpful Ideas

Here are ideas for restored class and civility. Remember that those who voted differently from you did so out of conviction. Like you, they faced tough electoral decisions. If your side won, don’t gloat. Please don’t write off the losing supporters as being crybabies. Instead, know that they voted out of conviction, as you did. Be kind to them. They’re hurting now. One of those whose candidate lost? Who fought to “stop Trump?” Give yourselves time to grieve. Yours was a long a hard fight, especially if you fought to “stop Trump.” Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote by a whopping 2 million. But she lost under our system because of the Electoral College. At some point, you need to accept the painful loss. It hurts to lose, especially when your candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. It’s tough but we need to accept that we’ll have four years under a President we didn’t want.

Above all, we Christians need to remember that we dare not pin our hopes on any politician. Place hope in Jesus alone! He remains in charge no matter who wins the White House. Are you all in?

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/12/01/dealing-with-toxic-social-media/feed/4November 2016: 5 Things You Need to Knowhttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/30/november-2016-5-things-you-need-to-know/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/30/november-2016-5-things-you-need-to-know/#commentsWed, 30 Nov 2016 17:39:10 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51542Today is the last day of November, which means we’re wrapping up Church Marketing Month. In addition to trying to help you better understand how church marketing and specifically church SEO can help your church reach people in your community and grow, we also have a bunch of other things we want to make sure you don’t miss…

1) Migrate to WP-EZ to prevent hacking. A dozen sites that use our old NE1 website builder were hacked earlier this month. If you’re still using NE1, please migrate to our new WP-EZ website builder ASAP. Here are the details.

2) Check help desk tickets in MyOCC. We recently improved the “My Support Tickets” feature in MyOCC. Now you can check the status of all your help desk tickets on one screen. Login to MyOCC and take a look.

3) Anti-spam blog comment plugin added. If you built your website with WP-EZ and use the blogging feature, you’ll be happy to know, we added a new plugin to help combat comment spam. We’d love to get your feedback on this. If you use a WP-EZ blog, let us know if you’ve been getting any comment spam in the last 4 weeks.

4) 84 New Tisa & Children Themes. Continuing our monthly plan, this month we added 7 new color variations of the Tisa theme. We also added a new version of every theme that includes an image slider featuring images of children. (Screenshot of the Tisa Orange Childre theme below.) These themes are perfect for schools and children’s ministries. This brings us to 280 WP-EZ themes, 10x the number we had as recently as July! To switch themes and use any of the new Tisa or children themes, use the Switch Theme option on your WP-EZ Dashboard. Login to MyOCC -> Website Builder -> WP-EZ Admin

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/30/november-2016-5-things-you-need-to-know/feed/1Who Is Sneaking Out the Church’s Back Door?http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/28/who-is-sneaking-out-the-churchs-back-door/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/28/who-is-sneaking-out-the-churchs-back-door/#commentsMon, 28 Nov 2016 15:47:10 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51491During Church Marketing Month we’ve been talking a lot about ways to use your church website and church SEO to bring people in the front door. However, your church won’t grow if those people are leaving out the back door. Your website is a critical tool for helping people connect and stick with your church.

Below are 5 great ways to interact with people and keep them coming back to your church and your church website:

Social media: Use any or all social media sites on a regular basis (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn). Create posts that direct visitors back to your church website.

eNewsletters: Save on postage and keep members informed by sending regular eNewsletters. However, instead of putting all the content in the email, include teasers which require people to click and go back to the website for all the information.

Online sermons: More and more churches are putting their sermons on their website. Whether they are audio or video sermons, having the past few months’ sermons on the church website is a great way to connect with those who are sick, vacationing, or out of town for work.

Blog w/ comments: Blogs are a great way to get a conversation going, but only if you allow for people to post comments. I realize that this takes more of a commitment because somebody needs to respond to comments or delete the spammy ones but this is great way to interact with your congregation.

Online surveys: People love to know that their opinions are valued. A few times a year, invite people back to your website to complete a survey. If you don’t have survey capabilities built into your website, you can create free surveys through Survey Monkey and Google Forms.

These are just a few examples of how to keep people coming back to your website.

SEO gets the visitor to the door. It’s up to your site’s content to welcome and retain that visitor. -John Jerkovic

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/28/who-is-sneaking-out-the-churchs-back-door/feed/121 Quotes About Church Marketinghttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/25/21-quotes-about-church-marketing/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/25/21-quotes-about-church-marketing/#commentsFri, 25 Nov 2016 12:48:53 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51392Throughout this month, we’ve been sharing with you pithy, insightful quotes about church marketing. Here’s a collection of all those tips.

1) Thinking that you don’t have to intentionally market your website to rank well in Google is like thinking that if you just walk in any random direction, you’ll eventually arrive at your destination. -Kurt Steinbrueck

Back in November of 1996, I was working as an electrical engineer in Maryland while my brother, Mark, was working as an assistant manager for an office supply store. We had already started two businesses together while growing up – a lawn service in middle school and a mobile DJ service in high school and college – and had been talking for months about starting another venture.

After mulling over a few ideas, we realized that the Internet was a great opportunity for churches but there were very few churches with websites. At that time, the only way a church could get a website was if they just happened to have a HTML programmer in their congregation or they paid a professional developer thousands of dollars.

I thought… what if we could make creating a church website easy enough that anyone could do it?

What if we created a series of online forms a non-technical person could fill out – pick a template, select the pages , type in the text for those pages – and our system created the church’s website for them?

Mark and I sensed God leading us to do that, so we created OurChurch.Com, I started writing the software for our first website builder, Beacon. I resigned from my job in Maryland and moved back down to Florida. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, here’s a look at our first website.

Be nice, it was the 90s.

The last 20 years have been a tremendous adventure!

We’ve been blessed to be able to work with thousands of Christian churches, schools, ministries and businesses, helping them leverage the power of the Internet and live out their mission online.

There are few things in life as meaningful as being able to use your God-given gifts and talents to serve God and fellow followers of Christ.

This Thanksgiving all of us at OurChurch.Com would first like to express our deepest thanks to God for giving us this opportunity, providing for us, and leading us each step of the way. Second, we would like to thank every person and organization that has entrusted us with their web design, hosting or SEO. And finally, we would like to thank every organization we’ve collaborated with, every person who we’ve interacted with on this blog and in social media.

You’ve enriched our lives in ways you can’t imagine, and we hope God has worked through us to things you couldn’t have done on your own.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you have a few moments, we’d love to hear how God has used OurChurch.Com in your life over the last 20 years.

]]>http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/23/thank-you-20-years/feed/8Urgent Migration from NE1 to WP-EZ Needed to Prevent Hackinghttp://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/22/urgent-migration-from-ne1-to-wp-ez-needed-to-prevent-hacking/
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2016/11/22/urgent-migration-from-ne1-to-wp-ez-needed-to-prevent-hacking/#respondTue, 22 Nov 2016 20:18:39 +0000http://blog.ourchurch.com/?p=51509Saturday November 19, twelve websites built with our old NE1 Website Builder were hacked. The homepages of these sites were replaced with a message from the hacker.

We have been saying since March – 8 months now – that NE1 is not secure and we cannot update it to make it secure. This is one of the main reasons we have been encouraging all NE1 users to migrate to our new WP-EZ Website Builder. (Plus WP-EZ is mobile-friendly, looks way better and has lots of improved functionality.

However, we also understand everyone is busy and would rather not switch to a new website builder if it seems like the old one is working OK. This is why we made the migration to WP-EZ voluntary.

After this weekend’s hacking incident, though, we need to raise the level of urgency for migrating. If you are still using NE1, please make a point of migrating to WP-EZ and activating your WP-EZ website as soon as you can.

For now we will continue the voluntary migration policy, but if there are more hacking incidents, we will have no choice but to set a deadline for migration, and then do an automated migration of unmigrated sites, which won’t be nice as a manual migration.

If you don’t have the time or don’t want to deal with the migration yourself, we can do it for you for $99. (At that rate, we’re not making any money; we just need to pay our team for their time to do the work for you.)

If you have any questions or need any help, please contact us by phone, email, or online chat.